As more people enjoy leisure, even common people form various sports clubs, and not only see sports, but play the sports in person, thereby cultivating mutual friendship and promoting their health. For example, amateur baseball teams, soccer teams, or basketball teams periodically or non-periodically meet on sports grounds, and play games or improve their performances through physical training or technical drill.
Batting practice is necessary for baseball among various sports. In general, batting practice is performed, for example, in a way that a technical coach throws a ball to a batter and the batter hits the ball.
However, this type of manual practice requires a person to throw balls, and particularly, has a danger of a safety accident. For example, when a ball hit by a batter goes to the thrower or a bat slips off the hands of a batter, it may cause a severe injury. When a person is hit by a hit ball on his/her head or eyes, he/she may surfer a concussion, may lose his/her eyesight, or may even die.
An automatic batting practice apparatus for automatically supplying balls to solve this inconvenience has been proposed. A “Batting practice apparatus” disclosed in Korean Patent Application Publication No. 10-2012-0066269 (Patent Document 1) includes a lifter on one cylinder vertically disposed and lifts balls supplied from the outside into a batting path using the lifter. A batter hits the ball on the lifter at the highest position.
However, the apparatus has a problem in that balls are not smoothly supplied, so supply of balls is frequently stopped. This is because balls interfere with each other due to friction while they are conveyed through a pipe-shaped passage. This becomes more severe when humidity is high.
Further, because a compressor is used for operating the cylinder, the apparatus makes a large noise in operation. The noise by the compressor interferes with communication with a coach, a person who is sensitive to noise may become stressed, and training efficiency may be deteriorated.